What an iPad might do if it senses the user is stressed
Apple is exploring how it can use its Apple Vision Pro physiognomy sensor technology to give iPads and iPhones the ability to detect stress in a user.
In the 1980s, when an original Mac broke down, it would play the crash sound and display Susan Kare's bomb icon. It was a bit of quirkiness that you really couldn't appreciate if you had just lost your job.
Decades later, Apple could be about to make a similarly furious move, albeit this time with good intentions. Apple wants to add a new health feature, where a device like an iPad can tell when you're having a bad day.
a newly revealed The patent application, simply called 'Stress Detection', is mainly concerned with the way in which such stress can be determined. But it does at least include some references to what the devices might do next in response.
Apple suggests that devices can “enhance the user experience by providing a notification based on an identified stress,” which won't be irritating in any way. But the device can also provide relaxing content (e.g. virtual meditation content, relaxing music, etc.), which would be a boon if you're on deadline.
This isn't exactly what Apple has in mind, but it can interrupt you at any time with a stress warning
To be clear, it's not just iPads that can end up being smashed into walls. Apple's proposal applies to almost every device. Parts of it referring to headsets and virtual environments, for example, are similar to previous patents related to the detection of Apple Vision Pro users physiological state.
Detail from the patent showing an iPad's Face ID being used for stress detection
This new patent application reads like it comes from what Apple learned in creating the Apple Vision Pro, such as exactly which sensors can be used to detect stress. These include “electroencephalography (EEG) amplitude, pupillary modulation, eye gaze saccades, heart rate, [and] electrodermal activity/skin conductance.”
Apple's “Stress Detection” patent application is credited to two inventors. This includes Grant H. Mulliken, who also worked on this book attention detection for Apple.